It's good to see you reopen this thread, as I think it's about one of the most important decisions Kagi has to make. And I'm not talking about Brave specifically, or whether users should be allowed to select their search index of choice. I'm talking about where Kagi is positioning itself politically.
Now, I can already hear some of you groan, most likely Vlad himself, but also a large number of tech-focused, privileged people with six-figure jobs who, too, think that "politics should stay out of tech". I've been one of you.
The thing is: You can't do it. The "apolitical" position always is the position in favor of the status quo. "I just wanna develop a search engine without being distracted by politics" really means "I want to develop a search engine for the world as it currently is". Which is a valid political stance to take, but you have to realize that it is a political stance.
Keeping the world as it currently is, however, means keeping it a pretty horrible place for people who aren't part of the majority. If you've never been gay, never been trans, never been Black or a woman or disabled or, heaven forbid, several of these things combined, it's very easy for you to say "I don't care about politics, I just want good search results". But people who are struggling every day, who are "playing life on hard mode" because the system is rigged against them, whose very lives are endangered by bigotry and violence and abortion bans and whatnot — they might have different priorities. And they want the world to change.You're calling them "political", not realizing that "I don't care about their suffering" is just as political.
Kagi paying someone who then uses that money to finance campaigns against minorities might've been the straw that broke the camel's back for many, but I see a more fundamental issue here. People are disillusioned. They expected a "company created with the mission to humanize the web" to focus on humanity, not amoral tech. You can't "humanize" while pretending ethics aren't a part of that. You're not humanizing anything by doing business with people who deny basic human rights to their minority of choice.
Maybe you've got your market research wrong. I didn't choose Kagi because of slightly better search results. I mean, it's been a factor, yes. But I mainly chose you because I assumed (after reading a lot of your documentation, too!) that your goal was to focus on people over profits. I was okay with paying for your service because "no ads, no tracking, and things like the Kagi Small Web initiative to keep SEO-heavy, commercialized sites out of your search results" sounded like you had pretty solid ethics actually.
I now had to find out that Kagi is not about humanity as a whole, but about maximizing personal freedom for their users, which is a completely different thing. Yes, if you're a White able-bodied straight cis tech bro this is pretty neat. But I care about the well-being of people who are less fortunate than me. And that's why I can't support Kagi any longer. You're actively hurting my friends, I can't pay you for that.
Vlad, I sympathize with your desire to stay out of politics, I really do. It's just not possible. You're already political. Because political philosophy already has a name for people who detest any intervention into personal freedom (like you did when you considered suicide prevention "annoying"), and who value freedom of choice over collective well-being. It's called right-libertarianism.
It's a valid political stance, but there's nothing "humanizing" about it.
